The Nex Step

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Way back in the editorial of Dragon #353, in March, 2007, I gave the first hint about a major gaming project I'd already been working on for months. While recounting a fun convention appearance at North Carolina's Mid-Atlantic Convention Expo (M.A.C.E.) I mentioned that I ran two marathon sessions of my Age of Worms kick-off adventure, "The Whispering Cairn," as well as another super-secret event, "The Refuge of Nex," which I called "a cunning dungeon you might be seeing more of soon."

Although the public did not yet know about the end of the print version of the magazine, I had received the terminal diagnosis months earlier. While my hectic days at that time were focused on giving the magazines the best possible send-offs I could, my nights were filled with scheming about what Paizo would do next. We'd already launched the GameMastery Modules, but that line was still in its infancy in 2007. Most of the plans for it were scribbled in my notebooks, and had not yet been published.

You may recall that the early GameMastery adventures featured an alphanumeric code to hearken back to the classics of the 80s and to help us keep track of which adventures focused on which topics. The "U" series, for example, featured urban adventures, while modules that started with a "J" usually involved a journey to some exotic locale. It's one of those ideas that work better in theory than in practice, which is why we eventually abandoned it, but in 2007 we were all still pretty excited bout it.

I was most excited about a specific alpha-numeric designation found in the planning pages of my notebook: The "M" series.

In a fit of hubris only a publisher could love, I decided that the "M" series stood for "Mona," and that it would provide an outlet for my personal adventure designs. "The Refuge of Nex," which I playtested at M.A.C.E., was to be the first installment in the "M" series, the beginning of a multi-adventure exploration of an extraplanar dungeon composed of several "stacked" demiplanes created by a long-missing archmage. It would be a huge multi-year, multi-product mega-dungeon in the tradition of Greyhawk or Undermountain, with plenty of intrigue and weird-world exploration mixed in with killer traps and insidious combats.

It was also WAY too much work for a publisher. Back then, I had enough capacity to balance editor-in-chief duties along with those of the publisher, but once the Pathfinder Adventure Path (and later the RPG) started rolling, all dreams that I would have the free time to polish off even "The Refuge of Nex" evaporated, to say nothing of my unrealistic hope of helming an entire ongoing module series while managing the most important business transition the company has ever endured. To make matters even more complicated, it was at about this time that I took on the challenge of weaving material from myself, James Jacobs, Jason Bulmahn, and other members of the Paizo staff into the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer, the first real look at the wider world of Golarion.

"The Refuge of Nex," at this point, entered a long period of stillbirth from which it has not yet emerged. But I never forgot about it. Indeed, in the time between M.A.C.E. and the Gazetteer, I'd built up a whole story around the elusive archmage Nex, giving him his own nation to rule on the southern continent of the Inner Sea region and tying his background into other exotic places such as Jalmeray and Absalom.

At this point I decided that Nex had been among the would-be tyrants who tried unsuccessfully to conquer Absalom, leaving behind an infamous Siege Castle known as the Spire of Nex. The Spire of Nex was, essentially, the old Refuge idea transplanted to a more robust location closer to the City at the Center of the World. I still wanted to keep the old Refuge under the palace in Nex's capital city, though, so I decided that both the Spire and the Refuge were different entrances to the same otherworldly place. The fact that I had Nex himself withdraw there after a treacherous attack from his archenemy, Geb, made the whole thing even more interesting to me.

So I started work on the Spire of Nex, writing about 10 hours of adventure material to use at my various convention appearances. That version of the dungeon has appeared at PaizoCon (twice), Neoncon in Las Vegas, Dragonmeet, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Dozens of players have ventured into the Spire, and given that it's more difficult to get out than it is to get in (just ask Nex himself), most of them are still marooned there.

	Illustration by John Stanko

Players really seemed to enjoy the opening levels of the Spire of Nex, and I quite enjoyed thinking about the place and detailing its many marvels. Over time I'd written so much material about it that I began to imagine my own adventures in the place. I realized I'd created a great setting for original fiction.

Fiction writing and editing defined my college experience, but since joining the workforce I'd hardly had time to write a poem, let alone a genuine piece of narrative fiction. I'd written dozens of game books, adventures, and editorials, of course, but I knew my fiction talents had atrophied, and the Spire of Nex seemed like a fun way to get back into it. Eventually, I hoped Paizo might even publish a line of novels to go with the increasingly popular Pathfinder gaming products, so I thought there might be a chance that, one day, I could even get it published—if I could convince the editor it was any good, of course.

So I wrote a 20,000-word outline for my Spire of Nex novel, and even wrote the first few chapters in draft form. Sure, I didn't really have the third act figured out, and once the heroes got into the weird worlds within the Spire the story sort of ballooned out of control, but that was ok, because I was having fun.

Then we launched our Pathfinder Tales novel line, and I read finished manuscripts from professional authors like Dave Gross and Elaine Cunningham. And I realized that my Spire of Nex outline was way too complex. Like, stupidly complex. I came to appreciate that I'd spent all my time working on a story that might work as the end of a much longer saga, but that all of the characters in the story had earlier stories that were much more accessible, and much less burdened by being tied down to a bunch of background I'd created for RPG sessions.

Fiction and RPGs are different things, of course, and I needed to write a story that worked on its own without all of the complicated background I'd invented to challenge my players. So I set the Spire of Nex aside and began working on that simpler story, which I called "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver." The story introduces my old Spire of Nex protagonists, the cunning swordsman Korm Calladan and his cyclops companion, Aebos. It also ties in other bits of continuity minutia I slipped into my Pathfinder work as early as Pathfinder Adventure Path #1. And, of course, Nex himself is also involved, just to bring everything full circle.

This week, we're posting the second of five chapters of "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver," and the first to involve hints of the grand Nex plan I hope to explore through future Pathfinder fiction and gaming writing.

Eventually, I hope that grand plan will involve a full novel called The Spire of Nex and perhaps even that original "Refuge of Nex" adventure I created way back in 2007.

I hope you enjoy reading the exploits of Korm and Aebos as much as I've enjoyed writing them.

For there are many more to come!

Erik Mona
Publisher